Engaging with Globality through Cognitive Realignment

1st Dimension: Making points and aligning a target

- / -

Dimension 1 of a four-fold exploration. Produced on the occasion of the "coronation" of
Barack Obama (as president of the country from which insightful leadership is
expected in response to global problems) and of the "crowning experience"
of the Davos World Economic Forum (for the instigators and observers of the global
credit crisis and its consequences). [Engaging with Globality -- Dimension
1: Cognitive
Realignment; Dimension 2: Cognitive
Circlets; Dimension 3: Cognitive
Crowns; Dimension 4: Knowing
Thyself]

Introduction

This is an exploration of the challenge of
providing succinct integrative vehicles for significance,
notably as this relates to any existential sense of coherence and identity. The
focus in Dimension
1 and Dimension
2 is on the challenge more conventionally understood in terms
of the knowledge
management required by governance and the governors -- on behalf
of the governed. This is developed in Dimension
3 with respect to those who are effectively "crowned". In Dimension
4 the inadequacies and impracticalities of such possibilities,
hitherto considered realistic, are used to reframe the cognitive challenge
for any individual obliged to order cognitive skills and accessible insights
-- where such dependence on external authority is now clearly unrealistic.
A summary of the 4-part argument is provided separately (Metaphorical
Geometry in Quest of Globality, 2009).

In the light of Dimension 4, readers could consider avoiding
the lengthy arguments of Dimensions 1-3 (regarding what is possible, but increasingly
improbable) -- then focus only on the annexes of Dimension
4 for proactive
viability and light relief, notably Annex B (Sustainable
Governance via a Double-breasted Strange Attractor). Those annexes
are premised on the assumption that sustainable
governance is necessarily sexy -- and if it is not then it is unlikely to be
sustainable.

Today the crown is shared by Private Equity (PE) and Hedge Funds. When you
see the PE big shots selling shares to the public, you know the PE party
is nearing its riotous end. And the Hedge Fund party is getting crowded,
with too many lesser talented investors dragging average returns down - to
levels similar to buying an index fund (but with massively bigger fees).
So who will be the next "Masters of the Universe" ?

The stage had been set for their role in the crash of the financial system
in 2008 by the government of the most powerful man in the universe (POTUS)
in limiting any form of regulation within that system -- aided and abetted
by his British sidekick. Together they also instigated, through deception,
what is now considered to be the greatest and most costly foreign policy disaster
of modern times -- both being sustained in doing so by their special relationship
to their Maker. In enabling financial extremism, they might be said to have
brought about what Osama bin Laden had only aspired to achieve through al-Qaida
(Extreme
Financial Risk-taking as Extremism, 2009).

The approach taken in the associated set of documents
is quite distinct from the economic understanding of globality or recognition
of the socio-political consequences of globalization. It effectively
contests the exclusive appropriation of
"global", notably by the Masters of the Universe, that
ignores its more generic significance with reference to understandings of integration.
Contrasting examples include those associated with an emergent global
brain, any sense of global
consciousness, transdisciplinarity (perhaps
framed as a Theory
of Everything), global wisdom comprhension (perhaps framed as collective
intelligence), global (in contrast with local) in mathematics, or
even understandings of global modelling focused on the ecosystem or climate.

The unrest is of course evident in other countries
around the globe as the consequences of the collapsing financial system become
apparent. It is not so much that people are taking to the streets, or the numbers
involved, but rather the unusual range of countries and the concurrence
of the protests -- at the time of the "coronation" of Barack Obama
and that offered by Davos 2009.

Until now I have seen this annual amputation as a civic duty
-- like giving blood -- necessary to sustain the life of a fair society.
Suddenly I see it as an imposition. Its purpose has reverted to that of the
middle ages: subsidising the excesses of a parasitic class. A high proportion
of the taxes I pay will be used to bail out companies which, as the Guardian's
current investigation shows, have used every imaginable ruse to avoid paying
any themselves.... We are trapped in a spiral of political alienation. Politics
isn't working for us, so we leave it to the politicians. The political vacuum
is then filled with heartless, soulless, gutless technocrats....

The government talks of reigniting public enthusiasm for politics, of bringing
out the vote, but balks at any measure which might make this happen....Consultations
are rigged. Citizens' juries are used to lend a sheen of retrospective legitimacy
to decisions already taken.

Look around the world and what do you see? You see signs of deep economic
distress and policy mistakes. You see emerging markets being starved of capital,
because the big western economies are looking after their own domestic constituencies.
And you see the first stirrings of real public anger at the way in which those
responsible for the biggest economic catastrophe since the second world war
appear to be getting away scot-free.

Complicity of authorities in dysfunctionality

Curiously, over the past decade during which the strongest political
and economic arguments were made for "globalization", somehow those
responsible for promoting this process failed to "keep their eye on the ball".
The globalization on which they focused was not "global" but a linear, tunnel
vision view of the "ball".

Systemic incompetence of regulatory authorities: Reporting
on comments of the chairman of the UK Financial
Services Authority, Terry Macalister
(City
watchdog chief admits regulators failed to spot looming financial disaster,
The Guardian, 16 February, 2009) notes that he said it was a "legitimate
criticism" of the FSA that during the past decade it had focused on the
nitty-gritty of individual banks' processes without standing back and recognising
that the expansion of credit was "too risky" for the economic system
as a whole. He declared:

With hindsight, the FSA, like other authorities throughout
the world, was focused too much on individual institutions, and the processes
and procedures within them, and not adequately focused on the totality of
the systemic risks across the whole system, and whether there were entire
business models, entire ways of operating, that were risky.

Complicity of authorities and denial of responsibility:
The manifest failure of "authorities" to
respond to systemic ills (or to determine responsibility for them) -- whilst
sustaining a degree of complicity with those who benefitted most from them
-- is severely diminishing respect for such authorities and the models through
which governance has been so problematically ensured. The UK Chancellor declared
(Alistair Darling: We made mistakes on the economy, Daily
Telegraph, 3 March
2009):

There are a lot of lessons to be learnt by regulators, governments,
all of us. The key thing that went wrong was that a culture was allowed
to develop over the last 15 years or so where the relationship between what people
did and what they got went way out of alignment, especially at the top end. If
there is a fault, it is our collective responsibility. All of us have to have
the humility to accept that over the last few years, things got out of alignment.

Alarm is not the same as contrition, and few people here will admit to have
done anything personally wrong....There is no real sense of collective guilt,
or serious consideration of what to do next, other than rebuild the world
that has just been lost. Davos has the air of a crash inquiry into an airline
that intends to keep on flying... What no one wants to admit is that perhaps
there is no solution - only decline.

Paola Totaro (Davos
devotees dodge the blame, The Age, 2 February 2009)
notes that the leader of the free world avoided the forum,
while its participants avoided a mea culpa.

Also of relevance is the insight in France, after World War II, that everybody
of significance claimed to have belonged to the Resistance. Similarly few
authorities would now acknowledge any complicity in sustaining the illusion
that gave rise to the financial bubble. It would seem that there is a case
for exploring the current role of cognitive turncoats --
as has been previously done (Marina Hyde, Turncoat
of Turncoats, The
Guardian,
28 March 2001; John Pilger, Tweedledum
and Tweedledee seek your votes, New
Statesman, 28 May 2001)

"Standard Model" of governance: Another possibility
is to view the dysfunctional consensual reality of all, or most, categories
as being representative of a form of "standard
model" -- whose inadequacies were apparent
on the occasion of Davos 2009, as noted by Joseph
Stiglitz (Fear
and loathing in Davos, The Guardian, 6 February 2009). These
could be considered analogous to the inadequacies recognized
by the exciting advances of fundamental physics beyond its own Standard
Model.

In that sense the array of complicit parties
might be more fruitfully understood as symptomatic of similar
arrays in the case of other domains in which "standard models" of
governance are challenged by persistent and emergent problems. Given the "strings" typically
attached to any strategy of governance, with everything linked to everything,
this might suggest a whole new application of the insights of "string
theory" !

One reason we are in this mess is that we assumed far greater foresight than
actually existed. All the fancy models purporting to show only a minuscule
risk of financial blow-out were flawed. They assumed the complexity could be
captured by mathematics and pseudo-science. One silver lining to the storm
cloud over the global economy is that there will now be an overdue revolution
in how we do economics. Already, the cutting edge of the profession is looking
to other disciplines - biology and psychology in particular - to explain why
models that work in theory come a cropper in practice.

Elliott reviews the argument of Richard Bronk (The Romantic
Economist: imagination in economics, 2009) regarding
the lessons economists can learn from the Romantic movement, from Wordsworth's
poetry and the philosophy of Nietzsche. We all have passions, paranoias, dreams
and delusions, he says, and these shape our future. Bronk states:

In
many cases, economic activity is as much a function of creativity, imagination
and sentiment as is the act of writing a poem or painting a picture.

By contrast, for Bronk:

Standard economics assumes that economic agents are perfectly
rational; that is the basis of its predictive equilibrium-based models. Modern
versions generally allow for certain types of information problem and market
failure, and recognise that institutions and even history play a role; but
they still assume that these factors do not call into question the underlying
model of agents as rational utility maximisers within those constraints.

Overvalued skills: The real value of the rare cognitive skills
of the Masters of the Universe (whose excessive remuneration is now held by
some to have been responsible for the financial crisis) has presumably been
as overvalued as the products they so deceptively persuaded others to buy.
As is typical of the economic bias of Davos Man, he was above all economical
with the truth. However, although these excesses have been recognized by Davos
Man, it is unclear that he applies the judgement to himself (Larry Elliott, Leaders
in Davos line up to blame bonuses for collapse of trust, The Guardian,
31 January 2009).

Davos as the "crowning experience" for
the "Masters of the Universe"

"Winter Court" of the world: As noted by Michael
White (Davos
man misses the bus, The Guardian, 30 January 2009) with
respect to the World Economic Forum (Davos, 2009):

...the self-styled masters of the universe have been meeting in January
every year since 1971 to tell each other what a great job they've been doing:
a sort of group therapy for large but fragile egos.

At an alternative, concurrent forum, Public
Eye on Davos, Susanne Leutenegger made the
connection between WEF and disaster -- as the
place where politicians flew under the radar, financiers networked and created
informal, powerful links and the media watched agog -- stating":

The
WEF was an important
fly-by-night lobby operation for the bankrupt neo-liberal business model

As the focal context within which a particular understanding of globalization
was sustained and promoted -- together with the cultivation of the associated
financial bubble -- the World Economic Forum dynamics and its pretensions
may be fruitfully compared to those of the Court of Louis
XIV of France as Sun King (Le
Roi Soleil).

It has indeed become a form of "world court" in
which the Masters of the Universe congregate and court favours from each other,
aided by courtiers (and
possibly courtesans) --
completely marginalizing the significance of the General Assembly of the United
Nations, complicit to a degree in that displacement. Rather than
the Palace of Versailles, the mountain-top venue of WEF, and its architecture
and symbolic decor of group and plenary sessions, might however be better compared
symbolically with the famed Neuschwanstein commissioned
by Ludwig
II of Bavaria -- partly as a homage to Richard Wagner.

Cultivating an exclusive consensual reality: As noted by
Gideon Rachman (Consensus
melts as the crisis heats up,Financial Times, 28 January
2009) regarding the globalization project of the leading powers:

That globalisation consensus was particularly visible at the annual meetings
of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Isolated on the top of a Swiss mountain,
the world's leading politicians, bureaucrats, financiers and businessmen
came together and spoke a common language...in tones of sweet reasonableness....

However he added:

Yet the 2009 meeting... is taking place at a time when the "globalisation
consensus" is under strain as never before... In retrospect, one of
the early signs of impending big trouble at last year's Davos meeting were
the sessions on the global economy, where speaker after speaker -- from banks,
business and the international financial institutions -- admitted that they
had no real handle on the scope of the problems hidden in the international
financial system.

Impunity of the responsible: Despite the severity of the
financial crisis and its consequences, surprisingly little effort would seem
to have been made to identify those systemically responsible. Rather the financial
crisis has been skillfully reframed as though it were a natural disaster --
a "financial tsunami", effectively the kind of Act
of God welcomed
by the insurance industry as a means of escaping responsibility (Avoidance
of responsibility in Systemic
Crises as Keys to Systemic Remedies, 2008).

This characteristic image management is accompanied by the marginalization
of views, now acquiring far greater credibility, such as those articulated
through its concurrent counterpart -- the World
Social Forum 2009 (Rory Carroll, World
Social Forum message to Davos: We told you so, The Guardian,
30 January 2009), or even through the United Nations. A degree of cynicism
is justified by the role of Kofi
Annan (former Secretary-General of the UN) -- as one of the co-chairmen
of Davos 2009, with Rupert
Murdoch -- writing a daily diary on Davos for The
World Street Journal (a Murdoch newspaper).

Control of some of the corporations in question is notably vested in the hands
of the "uber-rich" who skillfully deploy part of their fortune in
philanthropic initiatives -- for which they are esteemed above others -- whilst
avoiding payment of personal tax, as reviewed by Marina Hyde (Thanks
for the philanthropy, billionaires: now pay your tax, The
Guardian, 21 February 2009). The linearity os such thinking might be usefully
related to "shooting a line" -- a common jargon phrase of RAF pilots during
World War II. It signified boastfully exaggerating one's own accomplishments.

With the complicity of Credibly Neutered News, the consequence is that those
implying (or vigorously proclaiming) that they had the necessary "Cojones for
change" are most significantly dependent on the availability of cognitive neuticles of
the largest dimensions. Their depiction by Wikipedia is symbolic
of the degree of denial associated with any cognitive engagement with globality
and the change it engenders.

Significant caricatures of DAVOS as a crowning
experiencewhether real or imagined?

Design Adjusters for Very Outdated Styles:
As "tailors" to an imperial "international community",
DAVOS might be understood as offering new designs for the global system
each year, with cognitive supermodels strutting their stuff on the fashionable
catwalk -- and only the World Social Forum to perform the role of the
little boy in the famous tale of the Emperor's
New Clothes.

Cognitive pathology of the "reborn"

Of
great interest at the time of writing is the capacity of the "Masters
of the Universe" and "Davos Man" to reinvent themselves and
reconstitute the failing financial system to enable their business as usual
-- for their own continuing benefit. This was an underlying theme of Davos
2009. The demonstrably dysfunctional financial system, represented by Davos
Man, may indeed prove to be the archetypal "comeback kid".

It is the process whereby this might be achieved that merits great attention.
It is therefore of interest to explore situations in which an understanding
of an optimistic global future has been strongly and repeatedly propagated
through the media -- when the coherence and credibility of the message and
its bearer are dramatically undermined.

Of great value in this respect is the detailed study by Michael James Giuliano
(Thrice-born:
the rhetorical comeback of Jimmy Swaggart,
1999) of the world's most watched, born-again, televangelist -- caught consorting
with a prostitute in New Orleans in 1988. The study examines the rhetorical
campaign of Jimmy Swaggart to
salvage his ministry in the face of those actions -- identifying the rationale
that he offered his doctrinal Pentecostal community to justify his claim: "I
am worthy of forgiveness and continued support".

As Giuliano argues:

Using Stephen Toulmin's
model of informal argument as a tool to unlock the shared world view of rhetor
and audience, this study argues that Swaggart's overt stance, "am
solely to blame for what I did," was not the conclusion his primary audience would
reach. Using stories and doctrinal arguments, Swaggart successfully argued
that he was not at fault for his actions, that his actions could be accurately
blamed on other individuals and the entire ordeal would lead to an improved
Swaggart. However, in that the arguments were shaped out of the shared Pentecostal
world view that speaker and audience share, many parts of the arguments were
left unspoken, and as such, were completely missed by many outside observers.

The relevance of this study is that it also claims to demonstrate that such
rhetorical strategies are not unique to Swaggart, Giuliano argues that when
any celebrity, presumably including a Master of the Universe, defends himself
or herself in the face of scandal, similar themes tend to emerge. As such,
the analysis is arguably as timely now as it was with respect to 1988.

Repetition, circularity and self-reflexivity

With the plethora of meetings on every topic over the years, it is not to
be expected that gatherings such as the World Economic Forum or the World Social
Forum would escape the tendency for many arguments to
be repeated, whether then to be applauded as an affirmation of faith or deprecated
as misguided.
Despite the financial and economic crises, and the other urgent global issues,
this appears to be continuing in the gatherings of 2009.

Unpreparedeness: Why has the articulation of the points for
these events -- on a matter of extreme urgency for many -- taken so long? Why
are such events apparently so ill-prepared in terms of substantive content?
Why the "rehearsal" of
arguments already articulated widely -- weeks or months previously? Why were
participants not enabled to start the dialogue from where they in fact
finished? How is it that their repeated articulation is valued so highly when
it simply consumes that most scarce resource, time -- especially the time
of busy participants? Why does such use of time inhibit any focus on new proposals? Cui
bono?

Curiously argumentation does not appear to rise significantly above the morass
in which discourse wallows -- nor is there any call to do so. Any evaluation
of the quality of debates regarding the current economic crisis would surely
demonstrate this -- boding ill for any future, and even more urgent, global
crisis.

Wooly language: In an award-winng clarification of the challenges
of science, Etienne Klein (Conversations
with the Sphinx: paradoxes in physics,
1996) notes how the cognitive challenges of physics apply beyond the sciences,
by referring to the study of "wooly language" by François-Bernard
Huyghe (La Langue de Coton, 1991) whom Klein cites as pointing out
that:

...diplomats and other politicians are increasingly using a watered-down
language whose few and hence inflated words no longer have any true meaning;
a consummate consensual language that panders to the taste for tautology
and disables contradiction; a discourse which has an answer to everything
because it says practically nothing; a language unanswerable because it churns
out propositions that leave so much room for interpretation that listeners
are free to hear what they hope for. In other words, a language so all-inclusive
that it gives no chance to paradox -- and here there are grounds for unease,
we must confess. (p. 85)

Insight capture: Curiously the degree of self-reflexivity in international
gatherings, like the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum, is slight
regarding the repetitive, circular processes of argumentation. This ensures
that their history is constantly repeated in the response to crises -- as warned
for large-scale events by George
Santayana: Those
who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.

Whilst contributions
to meetings may be recorded, little systematic effort is made to analyze and
interrelate the content -- whether for any one meeting, for any sequential
series of meetings, or for any concurrent set of disparate meetings. There
is no lack of technology or skills to do so -- even in real time for the benefit
of participants and the ongoing dialogue -- as reviewed elsewhere (Complementary
Knowledge Analysis / Mapping Process, 2006). How is the collective
learning of such events to be evaluated?

Outcomes: Is
it any wonder that cognitively, as a crowning experience, the outcome is extremely
modest? The World Economic Forum produced no new ideas, on its own admission.
The World Social Forum produced an action "plan" and a set of "resolutions"
(Alejandro Kir, World
Social Forum: Resolution and a Plan of Action, Alternatives,
6 February 2009). These appear to correspond structurally to the myriad
such devices of the past that have assumed that the "project
logic" applied
to the problems of the past is appropriate to the problems of the future --
rather than a symptom of the inadequacy of the cognitive approach to such complexity.

Insight from a famous prison tale
-- relevant to ongoing debate on the well-known
collection of "problems" and "solutions" of global society by those those
locked, for so many years, into conventional cognitive patterns?

A man went to prison for the first time. He was in a cell with another
man, and just as the lights were turned out in the evening he heard somebody
from another cell shout out 'Thirty-One!'.
All of a sudden everybody in
the cell block burst out with laughter. Then another voice shouted 'Fifty-Six!'.
Again everybody burst out with laughter.

The man was puzzled as to what
was going on, so he turned to his cell mate and asked: 'Why is it, when
somebody shouts out a number, everybody bursts out with laughter?' His
cell mate replied: 'Well, you see, down in the prison library we have a
joke book that contains every joke ever told. And we've all been in here
so long we've all memorised all the jokes. So now, when anybody wants to
tell a joke, they just have to shout out the page number from the book.'

The man thought about this and decided that he would have a look at this
book. So the next day he went down to the prison library and read a few
pages. He wrote down the numbers on a bit of paper because they were so
good he wanted to tell them to the others later.

That night, after lights
out he shouted out 'Seventy-Six'. He waited for
laughter but there wasn't any. He tried another one. 'Twenty'. Again
silence. He couldn't understand why nobody was laughing. He asked his cell
mate 'Why is nobody laughing?' His cell mate replied 'It's the way you
tell them...'

Ingenuity: As with the more
general expectation that humanity will rise to all challenges through "human
ingenuity", it is curious how inadequate
such ingenuity has proven to be over decades in the Middle East (Thomas Homer-Dixon,
The Ingenuity
Gap,. Jonathan Cape, 2000).
Why should anyone invest in the hopes of others when these
ignore experience and understandings that he or she considers vital?

How are the processes to gather ingenuity to be evaluated -- given their success
in relation to the Middle East?

How is it that almost no effort is made to collect and
order ideas and proposals -- with open access facilities as modelled by Wikipedia --
as anticipated by the Encyclopedia
of World Problems and Human Potential? Where such
effort is made, why is it primarily governed by political, administrative
and academic criteria of logistics to ensure answers "fit" within the
current mindset (that engendered the crisis)? What does this imply about the
nature of collective intelligence from which human ingenuity is expected to emerge?

Does this not suggest that there is more learning -- of relevance to the
resilience required by the adaptive
cycle -- to be obtained from an understanding
of
why attention is not devoted to such questions?

the cross-impact relationship between sectoral categories,
as representing functions within an integrated system necessarily linked
by feedback loops (an explicit theme of the Inter-Sectoral Dialogue on the
occasion of the Earth Summit, 1992)

whether the choice of categories so funded is indicative of in-the-box
cognition and tunnel vision

the possibility of more fruitful configuration of
categories to reflect
desirable integrity and robustness

whether the nature of "categories", and the collective relationship
to them, should be rethought given that, in a period of climate change and
unforeseen global warming, framing the world in terms of essentially "frozen"
categories may be inadequate to the challenge

Application of intelligence: A "higher" order of
intelligence and technology (as was required in the development and marketing
of financial derivatives) was what got a globalized society into the current
mess. John Kay (Introduce
professional standards for bankers, Financial
Times,
17 February 2009) points out:

The skills required to understand the advanced products of the modern financial
system are of a different kind, perhaps of a different order. The requirement
was for an understanding of the mechanics of structured products combined
with the economic knowledge to put them in context and the management skills
to run the organisations that marketed them....

Of course, the financial services industry attracts smart people. In the
last two decades it has sucked up a high proportion of the best graduates
in Europe and America. Business schools offer finance courses and the designers
of complex products often have advanced degrees in maths and physics. Investment
banks have offered some of the best and most comprehensive graduate training
programmes available.

Why then is it seemingly assumed that a "lower" order
of intelligence, technology and training programmes (as exhibited in remedial
strategic gatherings) will get the world out of the mess? As noted by
The Economist (The
spiral of ignorance, 19 February 2009) with respect to the UK, lack
of understanding of the credit crunch is magnifying its damage, and specifically:

The tide has gone out and, with a very few exceptions, Britain is swimming
naked: almost nobody appears to know what he is talking about. The havoc
of the financial crisis has stretched and outstripped even most economists.
The British political class is befogged. Ordinary people are overwhelmed.
And just as the interaction between banking and economic woes is proving
poisonous, so the interplay of public and political ignorance is damaging
the country's
prospects....

The truth is that hardly any MPs in any party have more than a rudimentary
grasp of the crisis; indeed, their inability to track the City's baroque
excesses helped to foment it. (The intellectual background of MPs, few of
whom have much training in economics or commerce, may contribute to this
deficiency.)...

Meanwhile, the bodies and advisers appointed by the politicians to do the
understanding for them have been largely discredited...A layman might conclude
that there is almost no one in Britain capable of comprehending the financial
mess, and at the same time sufficiently uncontaminated by the mistakes and
ruses that caused it to be entrusted with the job of fixing it.... The public
is scared and uncertain; the politicians are panicky and confused. They are
leading each other around and down a worrying spiral of ignorance.

Unfortunately, those that claim to have a clues as to what should be done
tend to be precisely those who were most complicit in the uncritical mindset
that created and sustained the financial bubble.

Sadly, however, there are no longer any risk-free options. Policymakers are
preoccupied by the need to avoid debt deflation and depression, but they have
never been in control of this crisis and are now making it up as they go along...
The plan to revive the banking system is sketchy, and bears all the hallmarks
of being made up on the hoof.

The oversimplistic
approach currently taken may constitute a case of "throwing the baby out
with the bath water". Where
are the inputs to resolution of the crisis from more subtle perspectives, notably
from the complexity sciences? Or are these also to be understood as
contaminated and discredited because of their assocviation with the mathematics
of financial derivatives?

Issue avoidance: The bailout approach may well constitute
inadequate strategic thinking -- a model of Mickey-Mouse governance, perhaps
best exemplified by the response to the disaster of Hurricane
Katrina? The challenges it would
appear to ignore are:

need for joined-up thinking increasingly recognized as
essential for governance -- in contrast to "tunnel vision"; clearly,
whether or not giovernance is "joined-up", the problematique with which it
purports to deal certainly is (foreseen or not)

recognition of the challenge of systems dynamics. The
slogan of the World Economic Forum, widely displayed, is: Committed
to Improving the State of the World. However, as the credit crisis has
so clearly demonstrated, it is not the "state"
of the world that needs improving but rather the architectural "dynamics"
of exchange sustained -- of whatever nature. A similar point may be made with
regard to the forthcoming State
of the World Forum (Washington DC, 2009). In the tradition of "parallel
events" at summits, is there no case for a complementary event -- maybe a "Dynamics
of the World Forum" -- given that current challenges are "dynamic" rather than
"static"?

the challenge of interrelating incommensurables, whether
in the form of strategic dilemmas or the intractable disagreement between
political factions regarding appropriate strategic options

Curiously, at the time of writing and in conformity
with an international agreement, it was announced that India is
prohibiting the traditional practice of snake charming -- effectively
putting an estimated 800,000 people out of gainful employment in the
interest of concerns regarding cruelty to animals. The snakes will of course
be killed, being dangerous and having no further function. This might prove
to be symbolic of dis-jointed linear thinking thinking at its best. The example
is especially ironic in the light of the symbolism with which snales are associated
(as discussed in Dimension 2: Cognitive
Circlets).

Dis-jointed thinking is also evident in the exceptionalism with which sexual
abuse by clergy has been confronted in reent years. Any such abuse by the
eminent in international gatherings would presumably be similarly framed.
This is the same asystemic approach as has been evident in the discovery of
supposedly isolated incidents of massive investment fraud in the cases of Bernard
Madoff and Allen
Stanford. Curiously isolated incidents of terrorism are however seen as
part of a massive conspiracy justifying an array of measures.

Eliminating "disagreement": It is curious, as noted
above, that when there is a strategic challenge of any kind, the focus is on
producing a strategy with which all are in "agreement" -- or who
can be democratically
"persuaded" to that view by marginalizing any minority that is in "disagreement"
-- and Getting to
Yes. There is no consideration of the value of holding alternative
views in a complex system or any understanding of how to do so. Response to
the Irish "No"
vote on the EU Lisbon Reform Treaty is a remarkable illustration of this; the
demonization of "extremism" is another. (Norms
in the Global Struggle against Extremism "rooting for" normalization
vs. "rooting out" extremism? 2005)

No thought is given to the possibility that this simplistic binary logic of
agreement-disagreement undermines so many initiatives, and could be usefully
questioned (most notably in relation to the Middle East). Is
there a more complex spectrum of relationships that frames"agreement" and "disagreement" in
a more fruitful context in order to enable more inclusive strategies appropriate
to the complexity of the challenges of governance? (Using
Disagreements for Superordinate Frame Configuration, 1992)

Where are resources invested in such a possibility -- whatever the belief
in the probability of success -- in contrast with the invrestment in either
the "elimination" of those who disagree or in "harmonization", "normalization",
"reconciliation", and "conflict resolution"? Why is there
seemingly no exploration of this possibility -- when there are numerous technologies
dependent on "difference",
and the relationship between male and female is even a celebration of this?

Proposal: Rather than regret
this process, about which nothing can seemingly be done, the proposal here
is:

to accept the circularity of such arguments as they progress through a
pathway of points, and the predictability of the questions and answers which
drive them.

to map the many such pathways, perhaps to be creatively displayed at such
gatherings, as inputs to them or as outputs from them

to explore ways to configure the set of such circular
pathways, such
that they interlock to give form to a structure in more than two dimensions,
a structure that provides imaginative support for the "architecture"
of new paradigm thinking -- a "crowning experience" responsive
to global challenges

One website, Global
Sensemaking, identifies a range of tools for dialogue and deliberation
on wicked problems -- the fruit of the contuining work of a network
of people dedicated to helping humanity address complex, interrelated global
problems (climate change, energy policy, poverty, and food security) by
developing and applying new web-based technology to assist collaborative decision
making and cooperative problem solving. This initiative
gives focus to the question as to why these tools
are not used, and seen to be used, in response to global crises.

Examples:

Passing patterns: In this respect (as discussed in Dimension
2), it is astounding that greater sophistication is applied to the analysis
of patterns of interaction in various sports --
passing patterns --
than is applied to the patterns of dialogue at vital strategic gatherings.
The fact that
the justification of any focus on "passing patterns"
would be comprehensible and relevant to any cafe or pub discussion of sport
-- or a beach scene of frisbee or juggling -- suggests that the
opportunity is being deliberately lost to give enhanced credibility to dialogue
and its improvement in response to issues that are of concern to all. Is the strategic
challenge not essentially one of "juggling" priorities in ways
that should be rendered more transparent for all to appreciate? It
is in response to these issues that the "solution" is currently
being extracted from the pockets of those in the cafe or pub.

Mapping dialogue / Argument mapping:
Why is no mind map immediately available on a CNN or BBC website after
a key panel debate on a controversial theme of governance -- or why
is no argument map generated as the debate evolves to trigger better informed
comments? There is a curious tolerance of the repeated statement
of the same point in different contributions to any debate -- necessarily
made in linear text, in spoken presentations, or in video recordings -- all
demanding attention in linear time. It is as though people felt impelled
to constantly restate their perception that "London" was on the map.

"Argument mapping" is the process of producing "boxes
and arrows" diagrams
of reasoning, especially complex arguments and debates -- thereby
improving ability to articulate, comprehend and communicate reasoning,
in order to promote critical thinking. Once a "box" is made for "London",
it is then no longer to embed the assertion that it is on the map in linear
presentations demanding consumption of that scarcest of resources -- attention
time.

It is
not the range of relevant and readily available tools (such as Netmap
Analytics, Leximancer,
Decision Explorer,
or Net-Map)
that is of interest, but rather the question why is
there no call to use them in strategic debates (as with respect
to the current economic crisis) -- instead accepting debates as a totally
amorphous experience of "shooting
stars".
Is it simply that the focus of the latter is on "making points" and "aligning
targets" -- avoiding articulation of any sense of context?

Examples of facilities include:

Mapping
Dialogue: a research project profiling dialogue tools and
processes for social change, by Pioneers of Change Associates (2006)

Visual Analytics for Public Policy:
research programme to model, communicate and resolve complex issues,
by Robert E. Horn (Visual language: global communication
for the 21st century,
1998).

As is discussed in Dimension
4 (Knowing
Thyself), especially in a faith-based context of governance, there is a
curious association between action towards "the goal" of any undertaking (notably
through controlling movement of "the ball") and the transformation of identity
it enables in relation to some sense of "globality" (as discussed in Understanding
Sustainable Dialogue: the Secret within Bucky's Ball? 1996).

Mapping global dynamics: In a global system with very high
dependence on the understanding and design of complex technical systems, it
is curious that this understanding is not applied to the
challenges of dialogue between those who disagree and hold incommensurable
positions. It is also curious
that any mapping of such systems focuses on communication in its most technical
sense. There is no "map" of
the globe that captures the variety of systems on which the viability of the
global system depends.

The pioneering attempt towards understanding of "world
dynamics" was promoted
by the Club of Rome from 1972 in the form of the study of Limits
to Growth based on innovative global modelling.
As shown by Graham Turner (A
Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality, CSIRO
2007), the original study provoked many criticisms which falsely stated its
conclusions in order to discredit it. Despite the repeated substantiation of
its conclusions, including warnings of overshoot and collapse, recommendations
of fundamental changes of policy and behaviour for sustainability have not
been taken up. One of its principal areas of focus was population.

Over recent decades, however, a variety of "universal declarations",
"global plans" and "global ethics" have been produced as an invitation
to consensus amongst those who disagree -- without endeavouring adequately
to reflect their disagreement in such articulations, or to reflect the dynamics
between such worldviews. There is therefore a disconnect between levels of
operation (and technical control) and the challenges of governance in ensuring
appropriate feedback loops between systems reflecting different disciplines
and beliefs.

Curiously, in historic terms, the current Masters of the Universe are most
appropriately to be compared with the "robber barons" of the European
feudal period -- an understanding echoed in recent simplistic calls for a global "sheriff" (Time
for a Global Regulatory 'Sheriff'?International
Herald Tribune (Davos Diary), 27 January 2009). Rather than vainly seeking
to criminalize them for financial malfeasance, there is possibly a stronger
case for indicting them for aiding and abetting terrorism, however inadvertently
(Extreme
Financial Risk-taking as Extremism -- subject to anti-terrorism legislation?,
2009).

It is recognized to some
degree that the dynamics leading to such failure were driven by classically
intangible "sins",
including especially "greed" --
framed as "good" -- as exciting attractors for initiatives. No effort
has been made to integrate such "subjective" dimensions into understanding
global systems processes -- despite recognition by John
Maynard Keynes of the significance of "animal
spirits", discussed in Dimension
4 (Interfacing
confidently between locality and globality).

Learnings from "animal spirits": The relevance of "animal spirits" might
be considered to have been insightfully clarified by a report in The Economist (Animal
behaviour: Decisions, decisions, 14th February 2009) on studies of
computer-modelled decision-making by large numbers of insects:

...they found that computerised bees that were very good at finding nesting
sites, but did not share their information, dramatically slowed down the
migration, leaving the swarm homeless and vulnerable. Conversely, computerised
bees that blindly followed the waggle dances of others without first checking
whether the site was, in fact, as advertised, led to a swift but mistaken
decision. The researchers concluded that the ability of bees to identify
quickly the best site depends on the interplay of bees' interdependence in
communicating the whereabouts of the best site and their dependence in confirming
this information.

The Economist commentary concluded that "This
is something members of the European Parliament should think about" to avoid dangerous forms of
"groupthink". The commentary also notes the relevance to understanding investor
behaviour and the vulnerability of financial systems to bubbles.

Recognizing subjective drives: Arguments for a "new
financial system" --
a new "Bretton
Woods" arrangement
-- would seem to be simplistic in that they honour "subjective" drivers
only in terms of how they are to be controlled and restrained. They do not
reflect the spirit which is supposedly underlying broader declarations, charters
and ethical manifestos -- whatever their defects. And yet it has become apparent
that everything is dependent on the intangibles of "trust", "confidence"
and "credibility" -- that no physicist would deign to measure --
in a global system characterized by "loss
of faith"
in the systems of governance with the responsibility to sustain it. Ironically
this occurs at a time when the world's acclaimed superpower
celebrates -- at a coronation -- the primordial importance of another
form of "faith" (although itself in "holy" conflict with
alternative worldviews).

But, to the extent that a new "Bretton Woods" reflects a wider range
of systemic factors, including ethical and other drivers, any new regulatory "charter"
should take the form of a global system "map" -- or be integrated
with one. "Charter"
(as a static asystemic text) should then be understood in a more generic
sense englobing "Map" (in a dynamic global systemic sense) -- such
as to take on the historic significance of the "Magna
Carta" of 1215. This would constitute an integration
of technical considerations and values (as subjective drivers) -- a more comprehensive
understanding of globality.

This might
even be understood as reinforced by the linearity of spreadsheet accounting,
"line items", and "bottom
lines" --
through failure to consider other possibilities (Spherical
Accounting: using geometry to embody developmental integrity, 2004).
As has been noted, policy-making then tends to take the form of moving institutional
lego-blocks into new configurations -- akin to realigning deckchairs on the R.M.S
Titanic --
without questioning what is being so rearranged or the appropriateness of the
configurations.

It is unfortunate that remedies to the financial system crisis are then embedded
in this linear logic. The focus is again on applying a "stimulus" to
a suitably aligned
"target" on the assumption that this will get the system as a whole "up
again".
"Target" may be precisely the metaphor which inhibits realization
of the goal of rehabilitating globality (Enhancing
Sustainable Development Strategies through Avoidance of Military Metaphors,
1998). The process of aligning points to enable target acquisition can be considered
inherently risky given how "connecting up the dots" to frame a suitable enemy
was at the root of the intelligence failure in the "confirmation" (through
such groupthink) of the
existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (Groupthink:
the Search for Archaeoraptor as a Metaphoric Tale, 2002).

If the debates such as the one taking place over China are
ever to reasonably reflect reality, they must first incorporate the nonlinear
complements of the linear characteristics on which such debates have tended
to focus. In other words, analysts, policymakers, and commentators must appreciate
the distinct behavioral characteristics of nonlinear systems as well as their
analytical and policymaking implications.

Nonlinear systems are synergistic, not additive; the big picture must be
kept in mind and urges to simplify controlled.

Nonlinear systems have uncertain cause-and-effect relationships; side effects
and unintended consequences must be considered inevitable.

The behavior of nonlinear systems cannot be repeated; arguments by analogy
will never apply precisely.

Movements in nonlinear systems are the result of disproportionate inputs
and outputs; ripeness (timing), reinforcement, and resistance must all be
weighed.

Kerbel lists a set of "Tools to counter linear
bias and mind-set in the intelligence community".

Curiously in the focus on the "stimulus" of particular "sectors",
references to the systemic interconnectivity of sectors are extremely rare
-- the following brief remark in an editorial of The Economist (The
collapse of manufacturing,
19 February 2009) being an exception:

Nothing to lose but their supply chains: Some say that manufacturing is special,
because the rest of the economy depends on it. In fact, the economy is more
like a network in which everything is connected to everything else, and in
which every producer is also a consumer.

The systemic structure of this network has not figured in any public debate
regarding the special pleading of particular sectors -- with only amorphous
references to the economy as a whole.

Problematic detachment and
disengagement: The detachment
of "objective" cognition,
and the cognitive discipline of objectivity, enables a parallel process of
attribution of responsibility and consequently of blaming -- reminiscent of
what is deprecated in animism. Whether phenomena of the natural environment
(heat, cold, drought, flooding, wild animals, etc), of the human-engendered
environment (pollution, overcrowding, etc), or of psychosocial relations (competition,
government, "others" or "they"),
all may then be framed as constituting a blameworthy obstacle to change. This
process is curiously reminiscent of that recognized in urban jargon as "stitching
up" -- basic to many miscarriages of justice.

By delinking from such detachment, taking ownership of the categories in question
evokes a different relationship -- more akin to that with a child one has engendered
(as discussed in Dimension 4) or with an elder (an "ancestor") by
whom one was oneself engendered. Curiously the challenge is mirrored
by that for any individual faced with the continuing incoherence of the global
system --
eliciting dependence on distant coronations, groups or institutions from which
little relief is forthcoming (other than in the form of promises). Somehow
both WEF and WSF claim to represent the individual and his or her interests,
whilst making it the individual's responsibility to ensure that those interests
are taken into account. Hence the focus in Dimension
4: Engaging
with Globality: Knowing Thyself.

Transcending the blame-game: The arguments in Dimension
2 and Dimension
3 explore cognitive strategies
to transcend the finger-pointing and blame-game associated with the linear
thinking of Dimension 1 -- the style of argument above. These feature "re-cognition"
of understandings implicit in a range of symbols, notably those associated
with the highest psychosocial values, and including those exemplified by
"coronation".

Hence the concluding focus of Dimension
4 (Engaging with Globality through Knowing Thyself) and its various
Annexes. It ends with the question where are questions being asked about:

what vital questions are not being asked?

what inappropriate assumptions are still being made?

why are more appropriate questions not being asked?

who has a vested interest in not asking them, and why?

Curiously the emerging consensus regarding the origins of the worldwide financial
crisis of 2008-9 is that an inappropriate "culture" had been allowed to develop
-- of whose nature and implications presumably few chose to be aware. That
culture was of course considered totally appropriate by all that were in any
way associated with it. But this raises two questions:

the nature of the distinction between
this newly emergent "consensus" and the incipient "culture" it may itself
be seen as constituting -- possibly to be considered inapproriate in the
future.

the existence of other non-apparent "cultures" -- "which have been allowed
to emerge" -- that may be the cause of dramatic systemic crises in the future;
possible examples might include: the gendering of global governance
(notably its meetings), the culture relating to substance abuse, the emergent
paranoia regarding any form of extremism, the lack kof attention to the consequences
of population overshoot.

Of all the limits on expanding our knowledge, unexamined, misplaced assumptions
are the most insidious. Often, we don't even know that we have them: they
are essentially invisible. Discovering them and investigating them takes
curiosity, imagination, and the willingness to risk looking ridiculous. And
that, perhaps, is one of the hardest tasks in science.

It is not only a challenge for science. It is also a challenge for global
governance.

A major challenge for many -- in the face of the dramatic
problems of society and the planet -- is the inherently boring nature of the
"plans" envisaged as a means of responding to them. These do not
invite engagement or learning. As an echo of the linear mindset that engendered
the problems, they lack the requisite
variety to encompass the problematique and transcend it. As such the
attractions of variety are engendered elsewhere -- contributing to the
problems rather than to the emergence of viable solutions.